OOne month into the first Gulf
War, in February 1991, President George H.W. Bush called on the Iraqi
people to stage a coup. He asked them to take matters into their
own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.
Millions heard the call. If the United States, which was then bombing
Iraq, was on their side, they felt sure
they could depose Saddam.

The South

Uprisings by Shiiah rebels
began to take shape in the south. The Iraqi army had been
routed by the Coalition, and many Shiiah soldiers
changed sides and joined the insurrection. The revolt spread
through southern towns and cities, where rebels attacked Baath Party
buildings. Soon the intifada reached Basra, near the Kuwaiti border.
A tank gunner fired a round into a portrait of Saddam, and soldiers
around him applauded jubilantly. Within days, the uprising spread to
Karbala, Najaf and Kufa, deep inside the Shiiah heartland. Najaf
was in chaos. A demonstration near the citys great shrine became
a gun battle between army deserters and Saddams security forces.
The security men were outnumbered; some were hacked to death with knives.
The rebels seized the shrine,
and Baath Party leaders fled the city
or were killed.

The North

The Kurds in the north also
rose up, in a bid for autonomy. Masoud Barzani, head of the KDP, and
Jalal Talabani, leader of the PUK, had made an alliance before the end
of the war. Their peshmerga guerrilla forces were tough fighters, and they had infiltrated the Jash, a Kurdish militia
recruited by Saddam. On March 5, Jash fighters seized
control of the mountain town of Rania. Soon the revolt spread to Sulaimaniya,
near the Iranian border, where rebels captured the Central Security
headquarters. Inside, they found torture devices smeared with blood
and rooms holding the corpses of strangled women and children, victims
of Saddams executioners. In retaliation, the rebels massacred any
Baath officials and police officers they
could find. Two weeks later, the rebellion captured the oil center of
Kirkuk.

Saddams response

The emboldened rebels wanted
to move on Baghdad. They asked for support from the allied forces, still on the ground in southern Iraq, but were rebuffed. The Americans feared the Shiiah
insurgents were aligned with Iranian Islamists. With that,
the uprising was doomed. Soon came the counterattack from Baghdad. Saddams
Republican Guard fought the resistance in Karbala.
Civilians
and rebels fled the city. On the roads leading out, Iraqi army helicopter
crews poured kerosene on the refugees, then set them on fire. American
aircraft circled high overhead, watching. Saddams forces began systematically
crushing the uprising. Basra was the first city to fall, after just
a week out of Saddams control. Iraqi tanks captured a road above
the city and pelted it with heavy machine guns. Basra General Hospital
issued 600 death certificates, though many more were killed. There were mass executions of
civilians, some of whom were tied to tanks and used as human shields. In Karbala, some of Shiite Islams holiest shrines were
destroyed. Others were used as centers for murder, torture and rape.
In Najaf, residential areas were bombed, and hospital staff and patients
were murdered. The homes of suspected rebels were destroyed while the
suspects were executed in the streets.

Next Saddam redirected
his forces to the North. Kirkuk
was bombarded with artillery, and hospitals were
targeted. The Kurdish insurgents were in a topographical
bind  most of the cities they held sat on a plain below
mountains and were impossible to defend. The rebel fighters retreated
into the mountains with their families. As they backed away, Iraqi helicopters
threw flour on them  a cruel reminder of the powdery
chemical weapons that killed Kurds by the thousands during Saddams
Anfal campaign.

Charges and evidence

As cities were returned to
Baath rule, soldiers immediately posted pictures of Saddam. Thousands
of people were disappeared by government forces, never to be seen
again. Many were
shot in the back of the head. A film from the era shows 
Chemical Ali Hassan alMajid kicking and slapping
prisoners as they lie on the ground. Dont execute this one. He
will be useful to us, he says. Mass graves related to these executions
have been discovered in both the south and the north.

More than 2 million Kurds fled
into the snowy peaks between Iran and Turkey. Children
died from typhoid, dehydration and dysentery. Some refugees
were blown up by land mines. At one point in 1991, an estimated 2,000 Kurds
were dying every day. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees called
the exodus the largest in its 40year
history.

Later, under a Western security
umbrella, the Kurds returned to set up selfrule in the three northern
provinces of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniya. Once autonomy was declared,
many Kurds living beneath a line denoting the northern nofly zone were
killed by Saddams regime, according to the U.S. State Department.